Holy Smoke: the strange religion of cryptocurrency

<div>In this week's episode of Holy Smoke Damian is joined by Jamie Bartlett, one of the world’s leading experts on the dark web, radical politics and technology, whose <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07nkd84/episodes/downloads">gripping podcast series</a> The Missing Cryptoqueen is currently being broadcast by the BBC. It tells the story of a shady Bulgarian tech entrepreneur, Dr Ruja Ignatova, who vanished just as her dodgy cryptocurrency OneCoin was raking in billions of euros from investors – or true believers – all over the world.<br><br></div><div>Despite her disappearance, it still has footholds in African villages, the Chinese business community, Scottish housing estates and Britain’s Muslims – it claims to be Sharia-compliant. Not only does Dr Ruja's operation resemble a religious cult, it also gives us a glimpse of how technology and belief are combining in ever stranger patterns, often inspired by the utopians of Silicon Valley,<br><br>Holy Smoke is a series of podcasts where Damian Thompson dissects the most important and controversial topics in world religion, with a range of high profile guests. Click <a href="https://audioboom.com/channel/holy-smoke">here</a> to find previous episodes.</div> <hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>